Supported Hardware

Contents

• Recommend System Configuration
• Supported Disk Controllers
• Supported Video Cards
• Supported Network Interface Cards
• Other Supported Devices
• What does "supported" mean?
• Known major non-supported devices
• What do I do if I have hardware that is not "supported"?

Recommended System Configuration

We have no official "recommended system configuration" for Windows NT or Leadoff installed systems.

There are Computing Services recommendations for entering students (undergoing internal revision for Fall 1999):

http://www2.ncsu.edu/ncsu/cc/pub/orientations/fall98_compspecs.html

and there are proposed standards for the Administrative Computing Desktop:

http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/computing/adm_stds/draft.html

We recommend a system based on the "rule of hammered thumb" Buy a hammer and offer it to your users with slow systems. Buy a fake thumb.

Recommended system configurations are always subjective, but based on our own experience, "more is less." The more system you buy, the less problems you have in the long run, and that long run will be longer. Of course, you'll also have less money.

General technical recommendations for Leadoff -installed systems:

• Buy SCSI
  There are huge performance improvements with SCSI vs. IDE drives, both fixed and removable. SCSI devices (provided you have a well supported SCSI adapter) are usually easier to configure - especially removable devices.
• Buy lots of memory
  64MB is the bottom end for lab systems. 128MB is a good starting point.
• You don't need a large internal disk
  The Leadoff OS+components takes up only about 250MB. Supported Lab applications (not part of Leadoff) currently require less than <1GB. 3GB to 4GB drives should work just fine. There are BIOS limitations in some systems for installing a single boot partition greater than 7.84GB.
• Determine the processor speed based on your apps
  Engineering/Graphics/CAD/Mathematical applications that make complex calculations work better with faster processors. General purpose applications aren't usually as computationally intensive.
• Determine your target audience
  Lab systems may have a different set of requirements (case design, footprint, application requirements) than faculty or staff systems. Faculty or staff systems may depend on what the faculty or staff will use the system for - use your best judgement - get feedback from your students, faculty, and staff.

What we run in Unity labs:

* 4GB SCSI no longer available from Dell.

Supported Disk Controllers

Leadoff current has installation support for the following disk controllers, items in italics are still in testing: Mutiple DiskControllers may be specified by separating options by a comma. (e.g. DiskController=Adaptec2940U2,StandardIDE)

Supported Video Cards

Leadoff current has installation support for the following video cards. Please note that AGP video cards are only supported on Leadoff systems using the ServicePack 4 installation (the default NT install). All testing was done on ServicePack 4 systems, some video cards may not install properly during the unattended setup with Leadoff-installed ServicePack 3 systems.

Supported Network Interface Cards

Leadoff current has installation support* for the following network interface cards:

* Support means that the driver has been verified to install unattend in test and/or production installs. It also means that the boot floppy drivers (drivers for the VLM NetWare client) have been setup and available on a boot floppy image.

Leadoff also includes additional drivers that may be available for unattended installs. These drivers are those reported by Microsoft to have unattend installation support and are distributed with Windows NT. The installs have not been verified, and certain ISA cards may "interrupt" the installation process with a prompt to verify installation parameters. Plug-in-play ISA support is not available in NT by default. The list of additional drivers is on the Additional Netcards page.

Other Supported Devices

Leadoff has limited support for removable media devices. ATAPI and SCSI ZIP devices are recognized by Windows NT, as are SCSI Jaz drives. Some operations (such as formatting removable media) may not be available depending on the security settings of an installed system.

What does "supported" mean?

Leadoff's "supported hardware" are those devices for which the drivers that can be specified using options in the configuration parameters list or in some cases, those devices that are detected by the base (Windows NT 4.0, Service Pack 1) install.

Windows NT itself supports a wide range of hardware devices, but it's hardware detection lags behind Windows 95/98, which means that later drivers have to be specified manually. Whether or not the driver can load as part of the "unattended" install, depends on a number of factors:

• Did the hardware vendor write a driver that can be installed during an unattended setup?
  Some drivers do not support unattended install due to the design of the information file (.inf) for the driver, or due to the driver initialization code itself.
• What kind of device is it?
  Due to the unattended install design, Leadoff handles network and disk controller drivers differently than video drivers.
• Has the item been tested as part of the Leadoff install?
  In order for the device to be added to the unattended supported list, MTIP has to either have one of the devices to test it, or to coordinate testing with a College or department.
• What is the current phase of the moon, and the alignment of the stars and planets?
  Some devices have one set of drivers that will load properly and another that won't. Sometimes things will work that you don't expect to, and other times things won't. The BIOS+DEVICE+OS+DRIVER interaction is at best extremely complicated. Sometimes things just happen - and sometimes you need a crowbar.

So Leadoff "supported hardware" is hardware that we've tested and that loads as part of the unattended install.

Known major non-supported devices

Universal Serial Bus (USB): Windows NT 4.0 does not support USB devices. Don't buy one for use with Windows NT 4.0, it won't work. See Microsoft Knowledge Base article Q196661 for the Microsoft support stance on USB and Windows NT 4.0.

Laptops: Windows NT 4.0 runs reasonably well on some high-end laptop systems - provided that the laptop vendor provides full driver support for Windows NT. However, to take advantage of power management, pcmcia hot swap support, and docking configurations - you often need proprietary software from the laptop vendor (and this software may not run properly in Leadoff installs for student labs). You may find that Windows 95/98 or in some cases Linux, is a better fit for your laptop.

Leadoff does not directly support laptop installs with PCMCIA ethernet cards, because it's quite difficult (okay, impossible, every time we've tested) to get the NetWare client drivers to see the PCMCIA network card. The Windows NT unattended install does not appear to install the PCMCIA ethernet card - but we've only done limited testing (one system).

It is possible to used a Leadoff custom install with a Xircom Parallel-port ethernet adapter, and add video and network drivers after the install is completed. MTIP is working on a limited cd-only based distribution of the source files that can install a system in a "generic" format. Contact us for more details.

What do I do if I have hardware that is not "supported"?

You have several options:

• Install the system anyway and load the video/network drivers manually.
  The Windows NT setup may not detect your video or network drivers, but in just about every situation, you can log in locally to the Windows NT system, and add your video and network drivers after the install has completed. The TCP/IP and IPX protocols are "loaded" and should bind to the adapter driver as soon as you load it. We've done this quite succesfully on a number of systems.
  
  You can also use the Novell Application Launcher to "snapshot" your video drivers, and load them as part of an application install. We have done this for several lab systems with drivers for AGP video cards, before AGP support was added to the Leadoff install.
  
  Note: this doesn't work for disk controller drivers. Windows NT has to see the your internal drive to install anything on it.

• Work with MTIP to test your device, and add your drivers to the supported set.
  This sometimes can take awhile. We have "custom" support for testing your own video drivers and network drivers, but "supported" drivers are part of the core install, and as such updates, and additions may be limited. However, we do continue to make changes, and will especially work with supporting device drivers that can and will be used on a number of systems across campus.

• Get new hardware/minimize the hardware that you have.
  It really is to your advantage to minimize the number of supported devices that you have in your PC systems, and to pick vendors that have a solid reputation for service and support (and have good Windows NT support) This doesn't mean that you have to purchase "supported hardware" - it just means you are better off minimizing the complexity in the systems you support and for using up-to-date platforms and devices.

• Don't use Windows NT and/or Leadoff
  We have some support for the NCSUGINA, NetWare Client, AFS Client, applications, printing and consulting help for non-Leadoff installed systems, and for some Windows95/98 systems.

More Information

Don't hesitate to ask us questions. Send mail to help@ncsu.edu for basic installation or Windows NT support or drop a note to mtip@chaos.cc.ncsu.edu if you want to know more about using Leadoff.